


and i held you closer

by wekeepeachotherhuman



Category: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, College, M/M, Past Lovers, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 20:58:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wekeepeachotherhuman/pseuds/wekeepeachotherhuman
Summary: Dennis doesn’t care why Mac came out. Why Mac stayed out. He doesn’t care that Mac didn’t do it because he wanted to see if they could make this frayed, destroyed thing they had between them work. He doesn’t care that Mac didn’t stay out all the times Dennis urged him to just admit it after he’d let Mac touch him, and kiss him.Dennis pours himself another shot because he doesn’t care.





	and i held you closer

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place immediately following PTSDee; picking up a few hours after they all started drinking with one another when it’s only Dennis and Charlie left at the bar.

Mac comes out and stays out for a ten thousand-dollar scratcher lottery card. Well, a fourteen-dollar scratcher lottery card, when all is said and done. When the arbiters have been paid. But that doesn’t matter. The amount doesn’t matter. Because it’s still for  _ money _ . Mac does it for the money and not for—… 

Dennis backtracks. He pours himself another shot, because he  _ doesn’t care _ . He doesn’t care  _ why _ Mac came out. Why Mac  _ stayed out _ . He doesn’t care that Mac didn’t do it because he wanted to see if they could make this frayed, destroyed thing they had between them  _ work _ . He doesn’t care that Mac didn’t stay out all the times Dennis urged him to just  _ admit it _ after he’d let Mac touch him, and kiss him. 

Dennis pours himself another shot because he  _ doesn’t care _ . 

The whiskey burns down his throat and it’s the first thing to feel good in days. 

“This is bullshit,” he mumbles to the way his head is moving too fast. To the way his stomach has been swimming with nausea since they all left that lawyer’s office one week earlier. 

“What’s bullshit?” Charlie’s voice jars him out of the world he’d built around him. 

Dennis lifts his head, his heart in his throat. He takes in his surroundings: Paddy’s is dirty and familiar. Gloriously empty except for the two of them at the end of the bar by the back office. 

Charlie’s voice is high and slurred. He tries to keep his eyes open and up at Dennis, but he’s leaning dangerously off the bar stool, his eyes actually more downcast and hooded, because it looks like he might pass out any minute. 

“Nothing,” Dennis says dismissively, grateful that Charlie’s huffed enough paint, and that he’s had enough alcohol, that he won’t remember this conversation in the morning. 

“It’s the scratcher card, isn’t it?” Charlie asks, letting his eyes fall shut. 

“What?” Dennis asks, as though he’s been caught doing something he isn’t meant to be doing. Was it possible that Charlie was most perceptive when he had more illicit substances in his body than blood?

“It’s the scratcher card,” Charlie says, nodding, even though Dennis hasn’t confirmed his suspicions. 

“No,” Dennis says. He pours Charlie another shot; allows another one for himself too. “It’s not the  _ scratcher card _ ,” he continues. 

Charlie downs his new drink instantly, then looks up at Dennis quizzically. “Is it the Klinsky thing, man?” Dennis immediately feels his blood boil. “Because you said it yourself,” Charlie continues. “You didn’t wanna talk about  _ trauma _ . You just wanted to get drunk and have a good time.”

“It  _ isn’t _ the Klinsky thing either, Charlie,” Dennis says. “Jesus Christ. You’ve brought that up, like,  _ four times _ today, okay?” He feels his teeth grind together. He feels his muscles tense up and he just needs to send all these feelings to oblivion. “It’s  _ not _ the Klinsky thing,” he hears himself continue anyway. “It’s  _ never _ gonna be the Klinsky thing, so just drop it.”

“Okay,” Charlie mutters, holding his hands up in mock-surrender. 

Dennis sighs. Shakes his head and takes a deep breath: “So, maybe it is the scratcher card.”

“I knew it, dude!” Charlie says, suddenly sitting up a little straighter on the stool. “See, I know you, man. You like to think that I don’t,” Charlie continues. Dennis closes his eyes to his voice. Tries to ignore it, but Charlie just keeps going: “You like to think that you’re all  _ complicated _ and shit, but you’re not—”

“Oh, alright!” Dennis allows. “Okay, okay!” Dennis feels his voice start to rise, hitting octaves he didn’t want to be in tonight. “You’re right, you’re always right! Mr. Right-All-The-Time!”

“Is that something people call me?” Dennis scoffs, hitching his hands on his hips. “Because that name is  _ badass _ .”

“No,” Dennis says, sighing, his voice back down to a more normal level, now that he’s practically exhausted himself. “People don’t…” He rests his elbows up on the bar and drops his head into his hands. “Can we just drop the name thing?”

Charlie shrugs, reaches across the bar to grab himself a beer. “Well,” he says calmly. “You’re the one that brought it up.”

“Can we just drop everything?” Dennis tacks on. 

Charlie must catch how exhausted he sounds, because he falls back onto his stool with a soft thud, but keeps his eyes on Dennis. Even while Dennis isn’t looking at him. The bar’s quiet. The bar’s too quiet. So Dennis chances a glance up at Charlie, who’s drunk as all hell, but has maybe never looked so sincere in his life. 

“Yeah, dude,” Charlie says, shrugging. “Yeah.” He nudges his beer closer to Dennis. Close enough that Dennis knows it’s his now. 

Slowly, Dennis reaches out, wraps his hand around the cool bottle and finally feels rooted in something. 

“Thanks,” Dennis mutters around the sudden lump in his throat. 

Charlie nods. He grabs himself another bottle. Suddenly, neither of them can look at one another. 

“Let’s just keep stuffing it down,” Charlie says. “That seems to work.”

 

—

 

The sun is up by the time he and Charlie leave Paddy’s. 

They’d both accidentally passed out on the bar top for a couple hours, so they’re not as dead to the world as Dennis thought they might be. But as Dennis takes the stairs up to Dee’s apartment and trips clumsily on the last step, laughing, he knows he’s still drunk. 

It’s late enough that Old Man is gone. They never ask where he goes. It isn’t worth their time. It’s late enough that even Dee is gone. That reason why is equally not worth Dennis’ time. 

So, when Dennis keys into the apartment, scratching up the lock, he’s alone with Mac. 

“Oh, shit,” Dennis mumbles when he walks into the kitchen, to find Mac there, cooking pancakes. Mac turns on his heel, away from the counter. His eyebrows immediately shoot up his forehead. 

“Whoa,” he mutters, giving Dennis a once-over. “Are you just getting home?”

Dennis waves him off dismissively. “I passed out at the bar,” he admits. 

“Alone?” Mac asks, taking a step forward. 

“With Charlie.”

“That’s never good,” Mac says. 

“No,” Dennis says, turning his back on Mac, heading towards that sweet, sweet California king that he’ll get to have all to himself, at least for a few hours. “It wasn’t good, Mac. I feel like I drank until my tongue fell off,” he says shrugging. “And now?” Stepping into the bedroom, Dennis turns back towards Mac. Hangovers have always given him a flair for dramatics. “Well, now, it feels like there’s a radio show going on in my head that I can’t seem to turn off, so.” Mac just keeps listening, watching him dumbly. So, Dennis knows he just has to come right out and say it: “So, I’m gonna need you to stay out there, and just keep your mouth shut.”

Mac narrows his eyes, glances back at his breakfast, then to Dennis. “It’s ten o’clock in the morning, Dennis,” he says. “I wasn’t going to come to bed with you.”

And if he hadn’t been sure before, now Dennis knows he has to be still be drunk. Because the anger, the pettiness, the bitterness, they all bubble up to the surface way too quickly. 

He wasn’t going to come to bed? And why had Mac said it that way? Would it really be so horrible to lie down in a California King, just the two of them? Without Dee, or Black Man— _ Old Man _ —getting in the way. They’d shared a bed before. Had it been horrible then, too? Was there something  _ inherently _ wrong about the way they’d laid next to one another in the tiny twin bed Dennis had his first year at Penn? 

God, Dennis can’t even  _ think _ about Penn anymore. Can’t even think of who he and Mac had been to each other over those four years. Not without feeling like he might just fade out until there’s nothing of him left. 

Dennis sets his jaw; clamps his teeth down so none of these words can ever see the light of day. He turns, steps towards the bed, wants to bury himself under the thick blankets until he disappears forever. 

“I hate you so much, Mac,” he mutters, because he feels like if he doesn’t say  _ something _ , he might not be able to stop the deluge that really wants to come pouring out of him. 

“What?” Mac gasps, and his voice sounds closer than it should. 

Dennis turns, sits down on the bed, and Mac is already standing at the end of it, his hands held palm-up in confusion. His hair’s messy; like he’s just run his hands through it. 

“Nothing,” Dennis mutters, rubbing at his forehead antsily. 

“No, not nothing,” Mac accuses. “You said you hate me. And I’m sick of it, Dennis. I’m sick of you hating me.”

“Oh, really?” Dennis growls. “You’re sick of it? Oh,  _ finally _ .”

Mac doesn’t immediately fight back. And that gives Dennis a second too long to think about what he’s just said. The blood in him stops flowing, goes cold, makes him feel heavy in every way a person can feel heavy. 

Dennis’ eyes dart up towards Mac, but they can’t stay there. So instead, he looks down at his hands in his lap. 

“It’s because I came out, isn’t it?” Mac asks, his voice unusually small in their cramped room. Dennis thinks  _ it is and it isn’t _ sounds stupid, so he opts to say nothing at all. “You hate me because I’m gay.”

“ _ No _ ,” Dennis says, but it comes out harsh and choked. “That wouldn’t make any sense.”

“It’s the only thing that’s changed,” Mac continues, his voice stronger, more forceful. 

“I don’t hate you because you’re gay, Mac,” Dennis says. He looks up and forces his voice to match Mac’s. They’re in a stand-off that neither of them want to be in, but are too stubborn to back down from. “I hate you because you came out for a lottery scratcher card.”

Mac actually takes the time to digest that. He furrows his brow, perpetually confused, and Dennis feels his stomach tie in knots at the thought of having to explain this in any further detail. He feels like he could be sick, but thinks that if he moves, he just might die. 

“What does that mean?” Mac asks. “You want the money?” Dennis feels like he could vibrate out of his skin. He closes his eyes and feels both feet start to bounce against Dee’s thick carpet. “You can have the money. If it’ll make you stop being such  _ an asshole _ , you can have it.”

“I don’t want the money, Mac!” He bursts. “It was  _ fourteen _ dollars!”

“Then, what?” Mac pushes. 

“I wanted you to come out when I asked you to!” It sounds petty and bitter the second it leaves his mouth, and maybe he could have worded it better, but he can blame that on the whiskey and tequila in his system. 

“When you asked me to?” Mac says. 

“At  _ Penn _ ,” Dennis sees and he watches Mac choke on his own breath. He watches every emotion Mac’s ever felt in his life wash over him. He watches him practically chew a hole through his bottom lip. Mac’s eyes meet his; they hold it for a long moment and Dennis feels eighteen again. And he knows exactly how this will end: in a heap.

“Den,” Mac says softly. And it’s too much. It’s too gentle. It’s too careful. It’s a ticking time-bomb. 

“Whatever,” Dennis says, shaking his head. 

Mac wrings his hands out. He takes a deep breath, then he steps forward. He doesn’t sit, doesn’t kneel, doesn’t come down to Dennis’ level. He’s shaking, like it’s taking everything he has to not reach out and touch Dennis. 

“I didn’t know who I was back then,” Mac says. “And maybe I still don’t, but I…” He shakes his head, Dennis watches him think,  _ fuck it _ , then he’s sitting down next to him. Close, but just far enough that they don’t quite fit together. “I didn’t think I would hurt you.”

Dennis laughs derisively. He shakes his head. Starts to pick at his nail beds. “You know,” he starts. “I don’t believe in God. Or Heaven, or whatever.” Mac swallows hard. Dennis hates all of Mac, but maybe this is the only part of Dennis Mac hates right back. “So, I didn’t believe you when you told me I was an abomination, or that I was going to burn in hell.” He pauses, waits for Mac to look back at him “I didn’t believe you, but I knew what you were really saying.”

Mac sighs heavily. His chin hangs down towards his chest. “Dennis,” he says, and Dennis thinks this might be the most sorry he’s ever heard him. “I was never talking about you.”

Dennis shakes his head because it  _ doesn’t matter _ . It doesn’t matter because Dennis lived four blissful years feeling loved and whole and wanted, and hasn’t felt much of anything since. “I just loved being with you,” Dennis says, because he can’t quite stomach what he really means.

Now, it’s Mac’s turn to shake his head. “Why are you telling me this?” He asks. “What does it mean— now what?”

Dennis swallows hard. Pushes everything back to where it’s all meant to be, and just wants to lie down. “Now, I hate you.”

Dennis doesn’t know who moves first, but he ends up alone in the darkness of Dee’s bedroom. 

 

—

 

When Dennis wakes up for the first time, he hears Mac talking to someone out in the living room. Dennis doesn’t recognize the voice.

Then, the screen door slides open and Mac is leaning over him. “Dennis? Den, I need to borrow your car,” he whispers. 

Dennis pulls the blankets up over his head and rolls over. “Whatever.”

 

—

 

The second time Dennis wakes up, he’s alone. And he’s late for work. 

He fumbles for his phone, means to text Dee, to let her know that he’s going to be late. The date catches his attention:  _ February 14, 2016 _ . 

“Shit,” he mutters.

**Author's Note:**

> I was gonna keep this going but, as it’s leading right into Tends Bar, I thought that Tends Bar will probably do it better than I ever could! So, voila. 
> 
> This sucker just ends.


End file.
